Still searching for answers however, Morgan continued to be a part of the community, drawn particularly to a discussion on David Robertson’s open letter replying to Dawkins’ first chapter of The God Delusion. Prompted to write a response to each of Dawkins’ chapters in the book, the Scottish pastor eventually compiled all the letters into a book called The Dawkins Letters.
Editor’s Note: David Robertson is pastor of St. Peters Free Church in Dundee, Scotland and a frequent contributor to these pages.
Three years later and still going strong, one man continues to prove to atheists that his conversion was not a “temporary brain infarction.”
Nominal Christian, Mormon missionary, atheist, and now a born-again Christian, Richard Morgan recently spoke to Apologetics 315 about his life-changing, or saving, experience on none other than Richard Dawkins’ infamous website.
Having been through his share of religious inquiry at a young age, Morgan realized that he was constantly in search of something, whether it be spiritual or not.
Embracing answers in whatever shape they took, he found himself a Mormon at one point in his life after meeting two Mormon missionaries. But after becoming a missionary, he began to have some serious doubts about his beliefs, which later caused him to abandon that religion altogether.
Blindly searching still for something to hold on to, Morgan shared in his interview, “I was aware that probably much more than seeking God I was seeking a social context where I would be accepted. I think basically all of us deep down, we’re all looking to be accepted in some way or another.”
Having grown out of the need for that kind of moral support however as he aged, Morgan one day began to read Dawkins’ book, The Blind Watchmaker which revolutionized his life and made sense of everything he had been experiencing.
The book made one thing clear: There was nothing to look for, so stop looking and get on with your life.
“This was a real epiphany experience… to realize of course all those years of searching for something spiritual or God-like were bound to be completely frustrating because God didn’t exist.
“I didn’t feel like I became an atheist, the feeling was more that I realized I always had been,” expressed Morgan. “I had a feeling that I never actually believed in God but I was looking for some unhealthy psychological reason [to believe]… coming out as an atheist was really a hallelujah experience for me.”
Morgan’s interest in evolution increased dramatically after reading the book, redirecting his attention towards understanding the nature of living things around him more than trying to understand things that were above.
More than the religious debate, it was his interest in evolution that led him to follow Richard Dawkins. Upon finding the author’s actual website, Morgan was excited to communicate with scientists and philosophers who could offer more insight into evolution.
But rather than discussing the nature of evolution in the “oasis of clear thinking,” Morgan was horrified to discover in his first forum that more than half of the people devoted their time saying rude things about believers using extremely foul language.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen ‘The Social Network’ but there’s one point where a girl says to the main character ‘Just stay in your dark room and make snide remarks because that’s what the angry do these days.’”
After witnessing the discussions firsthand, the newly minted evolutionist agreed that the Internet was more a place where people could hide behind their anonymity and say rude things as a kind of therapy.
Still searching for answers however, Morgan continued to be a part of the community, drawn particularly to a discussion on David Robertson’s open letter replying to Dawkins’ first chapter of The God Delusion.
Prompted to write a response to each of Dawkins’ chapters in the book, the Scottish pastor eventually compiled all the letters into a book called The Dawkins Letters.
Criticizing the book in the forums, members began to attack the letters until one day Robertson himself appeared in the discussions and began defending the points he made.
“I don’t know how many hours he must have spent just replying very calmly and politely to people who were sending out the most vilest insults and criticisms,” Morgan recalled. “He just kept coming back and occasionally with a few words of Scripture thrown into his general discourse.”
Unable to understand what was wrong with Robertson, Morgan himself posed a question on the discussion boards asking members why the pastor kept coming back and what result he expected. One of the seasoned and experienced posters on the forum commented, “It’s just another Christian attention seeker.”
“Yes, David Robertson was seeking attention but it wasn’t for David Robertson. We all know for whom he was seeking attention,” expressed the now Christian Morgan.
For several days the attacks continued, until one day someone replied that David Robertson was a liar. But Morgan throughout all of the threads had not noticed this and asked where the pastor had lied, bringing him a bout of criticisms as well.
“I was probably too unintelligent to see where he was a liar,” remembered Morgan.
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